Hummingbirds

ByWilliam StaffordNovember 13, 1992

Too small to feel fear, one arrives faster than sight and then hangs, more jewel than bird, at a flower, wings worshipping speed, a blur in the air. Once, picking up one stunned by the glass I felt that little motor in my hand, a religion that I now knew all the way up my arm, abrupt as the universe was when there was nothing and God said, "Go." Sometimes like that you meet what is real, touched alive, a visit nobody arranged. A day comes, tame you thought, and you dream along just being you doing a kind act: suddenly you have a hummingbird in your hand.